¡¡Related: Condition of comet-dust stuns NASA¡¡

A technician unbolts a canister containing comet dust from the Stardust capsule at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The seven-year project collected particles from a comet.(Photo: AP)

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Excited scientists from the U.S. space agency NASA said Thursday that the Stardust mission, now returned to Earth, had exceeded their best expectations.

    Dr. Peter Tsou, the mission's deputy chief investigator, said researchers were ecstatic with the collection of the materials from comet Wild 2 and outer space.

    "Stardust is the realization of a 25-year dream to capture and return samples from a comet," Tsou told Xinhua in a telephone interview, "I estimated about 1 million dust grains had been trapped earlier, but now I find there may be more."

    According to Tsou, who is part of the scientific team analyzing the sample in the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the preliminary examinations are expected to continue for 6 months.

    A paper describing the mission's initial scientific results will appear this July, he said, "but the information contained in the sample may be enough for us to work [on for] more than ten years."

    Earlier Thursday, mission scientists held a press briefing in Houston, where the chief investigator, Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, stated that the mission "exceeded all of our grandest expectations."

NASA's Stardust spacecraft successfully released its capsule carrying cometary and interstellar dust.

    "We were totally overwhelmed by the ability to actually see this so quickly and so straight-forwardly," Brownlee said.

    When the sample canister inside the capsule was opened Tuesday night, scientists could see with the naked eye small black rocks and other particles that had been trapped in the probe's collection medium, the aerogel, which is composed of 99.9% percent air and 0.1% percent of solid silicon.

    The Stardust mission traveled about 4.5 billion km during its seven-year cosmic Odyssey. It looped around the sun three times to capture interstellar dust before landing in a Utah desert early last Sunday morning.

    In 2004, the spacecraft swooped past the comet Wild 2 and collected cometary particles. Scientists believe the precious dust samples will provide clues to fundamental questions about comets and the origin of our solar system. Enditem